Autumn on the Hill

This is the fourth and final in this series of seasonal essays which began with Winter on the Hill. Thank you for reading, and affording my words the space in your inbox. Especially thanks to my paying subscribers for supporting me to keep writing.

morning mist lifting on a fine September dawn

Autumn is stunning on the hill. I look out in the morning and all I see are sheep, mountains, and sky. Sometimes it’s thick and heavy with rain, or soft and still and the sounds of the sheep bleating, crows cawing and stags roaring echo eerily through the mist. Other times it’s wide open and blue above the clouds and everything glimmers in the sun, a layer of thick, white fluff shrouding the valleys below as though we’re suspended in some other place up here, a place between worlds. I can easily lose a morning watching the light on the landscape shift, every fleeting moment a painting of colour and shadow and form that begs to be photographed, a snapshot of a landscape that is ever-changing yet as…